After a Gymnastics Accident Left Her Paralyzed, Clara Brown Found Solace in Cycling

Last month, Clara Brown placed first at the Paralympics Track Cycling National Championships in the individual pursuit. An achievement for anyone, to be sure, but made even more special when you consider that the 23-year-old has only been riding since her freshman year of college—and she’s been on the track for even less time: just five months.

Brown has always been athletic though—competitive gymnastics, skiing, and running shaped her sports schedule when she was younger. But when she was 12, she fractured her C5 and C6 vertebrae at gymnastics practice. She was paralyzed from the neck down.

After 10 days of hospitalization in Falmouth, Maine, where she lived, she was transferred to the Shepherd Center, which specializes in rehab for spinal cord injuries, in Atlanta, Georgia. Her inpatient and outpatient program totaled to two-and-a-half months. She didn’t have any leg function when she started, but by the end, Brown was able to run on a treadmill.

“My life was forever changed from that injury,” Brown told Bicycling. “I was already a very motivated and dedicated athlete, but that experience changed the way I now look at physical activity. It was a priority of mine to stay healthy, and I just always believed I’d recover.”

She could use her left side, but couldn’t feel anything from her neck down, and she had very little motor function on her right side other than her quads—so she set out to find another sport she could do that would be low-impact.

“I didn’t have skiing, gymnastics, or track, and I was really bummed out,” Brown said. “But my mom was a rower in college and suggested I try coxing—I just had to sit in the boat and direct people.”

So Brown transferred to a high school with a crew team.

“I was really happy to be part of a team again,” she said. “If I hadn’t found rowing, I don’t know where I’d be—it was my first introduction back into competitive sports.”

Brown’s coach was on a separate master’s team and quickly asked if she wanted to try her hand at being a coxswain for them, too. Her first boat was a group of four men who cycled in their spare time. And since she was always looking for other activities to do, Brown became curious whether or not she could ride as well.

“I thought it sounded cool, but I wasn’t sure if I could ride or modify a bike to be what I needed,” Brown said. “But I met a guy in college who worked at a bike shop. He said I could definitely modify a bike, and that riding was totally a possibility.”

Brown leading the individual pursuit at the 2018 Nationals.

Casey B Gibson

She bought her first bike, a Canondale Synapse, in 2014. Because of her injury, her biggest hurdles were braking and shifting, so her bike was customized to have the rear brake on the left (since her right hand is almost completely paralyzed) and bar end shifters that she could hook around her wrist to change gears.

“It worked at the time—I didn’t want to dump a ton of money into it, my goal at the time was just to stay active. But once I switched to an electronic setup, I can’t believe I ever rode like that,” she said.

By January 2017, she was riding enough that she bought a new road bike and modified it so that everything could be controlled from the left—she doesn’t have to move her right arm at all. And a year later, she got a job at an active travel company as a bike trip leader, where she met someone on the Paralympic Advisory Committee.

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“I told him about my nerve damage and that I’d always wanted to get into para stuff, but that I just had no idea how to do it,” Brown said. “He was so adamant from the start that [U.S. Paralympic Cycling] needed more athletes—especially women—so he said he’d connect me. A day or two later, I was invited to their talent identification camp.”

Three weeks later, Brown arrived at the Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center ready to hit the roads. But to her surprise, this camp was for the track, which she had never ridden on before.

“I was there with three other athletes who weren’t experienced either, so we were all in it together,” she said. “But [three-time Olympian and coach Sarah Hammer] just had this approach of jumping right into it, and we were all riding up at the rail by the end of the day.”

Brown on the podium after her first place finish at Nationals.

Casey B. Gibson

And while Brown didn’t make the U.S. team, she found a coach, moved back to Maine, and started seriously training. Soon after, she got an email from Hammer offering the opportunity to go to the 2018 UCI Para-Cycling Road World Cup, where she got classified as a C3 athlete. She came in third in the road race and fourth in the time trial.

“Just being there was really amazing,” she said. “I had never been to a big cycling race before, and I wanted that experience.”

Brown trains 15 hours per week, which usually translates to around 200 to 250 miles per week. She also lifts three to four days per week.

All of this work translated into the win at Nationals and a spot at the U.S. Paralympic Cycling Resident Program in Colorado Springs, which begins this month. There, she’ll practice on the track, and she hopes to be selected for Worlds in February.

And because road cycling is still close to her heart, she hopes to make all three World Cups in 2019, too, so she can compete in both track and road.

“I’m excited to work hard and be among other competitors who are working towards the same thing, and I feel really lucky to be active in any capacity.”

Danielle ZicklAssociate Health & Fitness EditorDanielle specializes in interpreting and reporting the latest health research and also writes and edits in-depth service pieces about fitness, training, and nutrition.

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